Midlife Crisis
by Collie Parkillo
Summary: Ema Skye doesn't know what she's doing. [Ema-centric, ft. fatherly Phoenix]


Ema doesn't know what she's doing.

It's that simple. She looks the criteria for a midlife crisis up on her slow, god-awful Yahoo search engine, and it fits. No sense of direction? Check. Constant dissatisfaction? Check. No friends? Check. Regret that follows you everywhere? Check.

But Ema can't help but think it's something more, because she's taking too many insomnia pills for it to just be a run-of-the-mill midlife crisis. She's only twenty-three, for Christ's sake, too.

So Ema Skye does the most desperate thing she can think of. She calls Phoenix Wright. The Wright & Co number she'd gotten from him might be outdated, but if all else fails she figures she can just check the phonebook. Since…that thing…happened, she figures Mr. Wright might have moved house.

The phone rings until the very second-to-last tone, and then somebody picks up.

"Hello?"

Ema clears her throat. "Hi-Mr. Wright…it's…Uh. Ema Skye."

Silence on the line for a moment. "Oh, Ema! It's great to hear from you again! What's up?"

"I'd just like to, like, you know, catch up." She's red from embarrassment already. Catch up? She's really starting to sound like an old lady.

"That'd be fine. Do you have a date in mind?"

"Uh. Well. I was kind of thinking…right now? I know we haven't spoken in anything other than e-mail since that old case, but..."

Mr. Wright laughs. It sounds somehow darker than Ema remembers. "That's alright. If you give me your address I'll be right there."

So Ema rattles off the address of her crummy little studio apartment that was advertised to have a view of the river but apparently the advertisement was outdated because somebody had started a construction project directly in front of the building.

The doorbell rings, and Ema puts down her mug of microwave-made chamomile tea and gets up. Peering through the small peep-hole just to make extra-sure it's not some creep, she sees Phoenix Wright, looking much more real than the picture of him someone had snapped that had ended up in the tabloids with the headline 'Lawyer to Bum.'

It would have been pretty easy to mistake him for "some creep" at this point. She snickers. She wouldn't say that to his face, of course, but the 'No money and no law license' look really wasn't working for him.

"Hi there, Ema." He greets her with a pat on the back. "Nice to see you again."

"The same to you."

Mr. Wright looks around. "Nice little place you got here."

Ema rolls her eyes. "No. It's terrible."

"Why do you say that?"

"It's tiny and there's a construction project right outside the window."

"That could get annoying, sure." He looks at her, studying her like he's trying to compare her to a mental image. "How are you doing, Ema? You look tired."

"I am tired." She sighs, then before he can say something in response she gets straight to the point. "I don't really want to catch up-I mean, of course I do, just…that wasn't really what I called you about. I'm tired, Mr. Wright. I'm tired and I don't know what to do about it."

"You've got a job now, haven't you?"

Ema looks down. She remembers the interview, how she'd emphasized it was EE-ma not EH-ma and how she'd been studying to be a forensic scientist her whole life, and how the lady at the desk had said 'We'll take what you said into consideration. Expect an e-mail in a few days.'

What a laugh. What a goddamn laugh. They probably hadn't even looked at her application. She'd gotten an e-mail saying they didn't accept her for that position, but they could offer her a place on the criminal investigation team.

"Not the one I wanted."

"Ah." Mr. Wright unzipped his jacket and hung it up. "How about we sit down?"

So she lead Mr. Wright over to the armchairs that faced the patch of tiled floor that somehow seemed to pass the requirements for a kitchen. "Ema, how's Lana?"

"Fine. She lives in Michigan. She likes to hike. She tags me in old pictures on Facebook from time to time. Why do you ask?"

Mr. Wright looked amused. "You look like her, that's all."

Ema looked down. "I guess I do." She sighed again. "Mr. Wright, I think there's something wrong with me. I try to be happy, but I just can't be. I go through every day like it's a chore. I don't even like the investigations. I just stand there and do whatever's required of me. I don't have any friends. I-"

"Whoa, whoa, Ema. You have friends. You have me, don't you?"

The smile on Mr. Wright's face looked genuine, and Ema couldn't help but remember when she was a child and she'd wondered if she'd ever have a mama or papa like the other kids. She'd heard from Maya Fey, an old friend, that Mr. Wright was like everybody's dad. She supposed that was true.

"Yeah. I guess I do. But still…I must be depressed or something. Nothing cheers me up. I used to be all peppy and cheery. Now I'm just a bitter 20s-something."

"Ema, look at me." She did so. "Ema, that's okay. That's fine. Nothing's wrong with you. You're sad. That's all. It's okay to be mad and sad. You're still the same person you were when you were younger. You've got the same body."

"But-"

"Ema, what do you like?"

"Well…" She tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair contemplatively. "I like science. Yesterday I read an article about an artificial leaf someone was able to make, and it was like, a breakthrough."

"How'd that make you feel?"

"Excited. I was thinking like, damn, that's amazing, I wish I could do that kind of work. But instead I'm a piss-poor police detective."

"That sentence was great before you said stuff after the word 'amazing.' You thought it was cool, right?" Ema nodded. "I'm not gonna tell you you're not depressed. That's a terrible thing that bad parents do. But I am gonna tell you that no matter what you're feeling, you're the same Ema from the big Lana Skye case that I met. You haven't lost part of yourself. You might not have the job you want or anything, but that's the world around you. That's not you. You're you and no bad shit that happens to you can change that."

Ema suddenly realized she was tearing up, and pushed her pink glasses down over her eyes. "T-Thanks, Mr. Wright…"

"It would be okay if you didn't like anything. It would be okay if you didn't want to do anything except stay in bed all day and cry. Of course it wouldn't be good for you and I wouldn't encourage it, but it wouldn't be something being wrong with you. And you know, if you want to talk to someone, there's someone I know very well who's gone through something very similar...Do the words 'stuck-up jerk' ring a bell?" That got Ema to smile a little, and Mr. Wright patted her on the back. "That's right. He'd probably love to hear from you."

Ema thought she would start sobbing if she didn't do something to divert attention away from herself, so she said hoarsely "Oh…it's five already. Do you want to stay for dinner?"

"That'd be great."

Ema got up and walked over to the crappy stove, then decided she didn't feel like fighting with the temperature dials and just grabbed a packet of instant noodles. She poured two cups of water, poured the noodles in, and stuck them in the microwave.

"Ema."

"Yeah?"

"I'd like to give you somebody's name, just to pass the word around. New guy at my firm-his name's Apollo Justice. He's a good kid. I think you'd be a good team. If you see him around while you're investigating, give him a shout."

Although Ema didn't know how to tell him, the fact that Mr. Wright had remembered her brief mention of not having any friends. "Thanks, Mr. Wright. I'll remember that."

And for the rest of the evening, they sat and ate cups of instant noodles in Ema's armchairs, because she'd never had any guests and had never thought about having a dining table. And they talked about the past, and the present, and the future, and Maya Fey's becoming the Master of Kurain and Jake Marshall going into the farming business and the hiking club Lana had started.

And Ema didn't forget how the permanent raincloud of feelings she'd had, but she thought that that was okay. That was okay, because those feelings were hers and she was still her and perhaps she shouldn't try to force them to go away.


End file.
